Technical Field
This invention relates generally to managing energy in a data center, and more specifically, to high-efficiency data center cooling using a plurality of cooling systems.
Related Art
Traditional data centers conventionally include a plurality of individual computing resources contained within a housing structure. Data centers, or other physical spaces, benefit from an adequate and optimized power and cooling infrastructure. Maintaining data centers at desired temperatures (e.g., set points) helps prevent computer hardware (e.g., IT infrastructure) from overheating and malfunctioning. To this end, many data centers are cooled to relatively low temperatures (e.g., 75° F.) to increase equipment reliability and useful life, and to avoid downtime for repair and/or replacement.
As data centers consume more and more electricity, and Chief Information Officer (CIO) budgets remain relatively fixed, extreme pressure has been mounting to make data centers more energy efficient. Data centers are becoming more virtualized, leading to higher and more unpredictable cooling requirements, making energy efficiency more challenging. In response, standards organizations like the American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the European Union Code of Conduct for Datacenters, have adopted more relaxed environmental standards for data centers, thus allowing for higher server inlet temperatures. Higher server inlet conditions encourage new and innovative design and control concepts that are unique to the data center space. Unlike other types of building environments, data centers have extremely low latent loads because IT load contributes only sensible heat, as there are very few human beings in the space to add humidity to the data center air, and fresh air make up is very low.
It is possible to design the infrastructure that supports the data center with variable speed devices and options for free cooling when outside environmental conditions are favorable. While these methods may result in measurable energy savings, they do not fully maximize varying environmental conditions for increased savings.